You probably know Psalm 119 is the longest of all the Psalms, 176 verses. If you ask the question, what is it about? I think you could say this, “It's about a man's love affair with his Bible.” The words love and delight pop up several times, at least ten times for love, and I think ten times for delight. So, twenty times the words love and delight are used by the psalmist. It's a good reminder. We don't just want to believe our Bibles, but we want to love our Bibles and delight in them. There's two verses that I want us to focus on to capture the affections of the psalmist. Look down to the back end of the Psalm, verse 167. Look what he says, “My soul keeps your testimonies, I love them exceedingly.” Notice, “I love them exceedingly.” He doesn't just love them, but he loves them exceedingly, above measure, beyond measure, greatly, abundantly. And certainly one of the clearest evidences that you love God's law, or love His commandments, is you obey them, you keep them. And doesn't Jesus say that, “If you love me, you keep my commandments.”

The second verse, look at verse 179, he picks up that other word, he uses the word love about ten times, but he also uses the word delight. Psalm 119:179, “I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight.” Now, is there anybody else who says that? If you keep thinking of the Apostle Paul, is there a place where he says he delights in the law of God? Yes he does, Romans chapter 7 — he talks about the law of God is his delight. And so that's what we want to consider.

Thinking of his love and delight in the law of God, or the attributes, or the precepts of God, someone has said this, “Familiarity can be one of the most dangerous things in the world.” You've probably heard that expression, ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ and you can lose respect, can't you, admiration and appreciation for the best of people and the best of gifts. All of us can do that. It is incredibly easy to take things for granted and devalue them. Just think of that response, that shocking response to Jesus by the people there in Nazareth. They saw Him grow up in that little town, His face was very familiar to them, and when He shows up, and He preaches in that synagogue in Nazareth they don't respond all that well, do they? They don't think He’s Messianic material. This is Joseph the carpenter’s son, so they don't really esteem Him, and they end up trying to throw Him over a cliff. You could say their familiarity with Jesus brought contempt.

You see something similar in the Old Testament when it came to manna from heaven, remember? When they first received that bread from heaven, they were so happy, so thankful, initially impressed with that food miracle, but it wasn't long before they begin to loathe it. So again, the greatest of God's gifts can easily become despised and unappreciated. John Owen said this,

And again, that can easily happen when it comes to reading our Bibles, when it comes to even listening to a sermon so familiar that we lose the awe and the amazement factor. So we always have to guard our hearts and make sure that we love our Bibles and keep on cherishing them and valuing them. And to that end, let me just mention three things that I think can help us to keep in mind just how precious our Bible is.

Don't forget its exclusivity. It's one of a kind. There's no other book like the Bible in all the world. There never has been, and there never will be. It's a supernatural book. It's the only book that God wrote. Now, He wrote using men, I realize that, but it's the only book that He inspired, 2 Timothy 3, God inspired, God breathed, literally, it came from the very mouth of God. So that's the first thing, keep that in mind whenever you pick up your Bible, there's no other book like this in all the world.

This is a Christological book, it's about Jesus. Jesus said, “The Scriptures testify of me.” Jesus is central; He's the ultimate hero in the story. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson says, “Too many Christians open their Bibles and go looking for themselves. What does this say about me?” Well, that's not a bad thing to ask yourself, but what does it say about Jesus? That's the first thing that we should be asking, “What does it say about Jesus and His great rescue operation?” Somebody has given this this kind of description of our Bibles, I think it's a good one, it's called the 3,000-foot topography of our Bibles. The Old Testament was the anticipation of Christ; The Gospels are the manifestations of Christ; the Book of Acts are the proclamation of Christ; the Epistles are the explanation of Christ; Revelation is the consummation because of Christ. We should delight in our Bibles like the psalmist, he loved God's law, he had a much more truncated Bible then we did. We should love it. What could help us to love it and delight in it? It's exclusivity, it's the only book like it in all the world; it's the one supernatural book; it's Christology, it's about Jesus, the greatest person who ever lived and accomplished the greatest rescue operation.

The third thing I think we keep in mind when we open up our Bibles, and this can keep us from developing a familiarity that could breed contempt. 2 Timothy 3:16, go back to that key text, “All Scripture is profitable,” and then he gives reasons of how it is profitable, “for doctrine, instruction, reproof, correction, and righteousness.” This is the only book in the world, (every book informs us, at least most of them can inform us), but this one transforms you. This is the only book in the world that can change your heart, under the power of the Holy Spirit. He can change your attitudes, your priorities, your ambitions; it can change your pleasures, what's most important to you? And we can be sure of this, the devil hates God and he hates God's Word. He hates God, the messenger, and he hates the message, and you can find that hate manifested across the globe, throughout the world. We live in a world that is constantly trying to pull us away from our Bibles; the devil is always trying to sow doubts in our minds about our Bibles. And if we're going to be fruitful Christians, we have to be Christians who meditate upon the Word day and night. That's the psalmist. The very first Psalm introduces us to the blessed man. What does he do? Well, he shuns the negativity of sin, but he also is meditating upon the Word of God day and night. That explains his stability, his endurance and his fruitfulness. So I trust that's the kind of person we want to be. “People,” I think Spurgeon said this, “should be walking Bibles, saturated with Biblical truth.”

Here's something I've listened to, I don't know if you've ever picked this up and maybe I've not listened as carefully as I should, but I've rarely heard people thank God for their Bibles. Just a question, I've heard them thank God for salvation, for Christ, the Holy Spirit, but I haven't heard too many people, maybe they have, maybe I missed it, thanking God for their Bibles. We should be thanking God for our Bibles. Yes, thank God for all the other gifts, the temporal gifts, but do we thank God for our Bibles. Without this book, we wouldn't survive; without this book, the world collapses, implodes into total darkness. That's why in the days of Noah, of great wickedness and corruption, there was no Bible to restrain the sin.

So let's pray, brethren, for a deeper love and a deeper delight for our Bibles. And the more familiar we become with our Bibles, the more we should love our Bibles, the more we should delight in our Bibles, the more we should read our Bibles and study our Bibles.